Lockdown Cuisine Thread

Yeah, but where does #3 come in?

Haven't tried it for that. One noticeable feature is that the lid has a sealing ring made of silicone, and this will retain what you could only call an unkind caricature of the smell of whatever you cooked last. You can kind of fix it by running a batch of white vinegar and citrus peels, which doesn't make the odor go away, just turns it into a caricature of vinegar and citrus, which is often an improvement.

I'm not sure I want to know what an Instant Pot caricature of EGR cooler smells like.

 

I have a Mk-1, Mod-1(*) stovetop pressure cooker that I keep on hand for canning - something that I really do not do much of because a lot of our pantry staples are shelf safe faaaar beyond the 'sell-by' date, and I'm not THAT much of a prepper.

* Mk-1, Mod-0 (original) pressure cookers used to have a scary hissing weights on them.

 

Recently bought a Breville Air Fryer Smart Oven and made some delicious zucchini sticks. Gonna try air-fried chicken soon.

 

We're just trying to avoid using oil/grease. The zucchini sticks came out surprisingly crispy w/o oil.

 

different generations .... as kids of the 1960s, we remember our moms going healthy. Switching from lard, & then to Crisco. LOL
To this day, it's still no easy task to NOT scramble eggs in the bacon grease. Yum yum!

.

 

I remember the pressure "cookers" that came with two or three different weights to sit on top of the vent tube. The opening had a certain area, divide that into the chosen weight, that's the pressure you get.

I have a larger pressure "canner" that came with only one weight (the 15 psi one) but has a pressure gauge in the middle of the lid that reads psi on a dial. In normal use there's no steam escaping under the weight, and you really can dial in any pressure you want, by watching the gauge and adjusting your burner input under the canner.

It's kind of fun working out how that can be. There's a whole evaporate-circulate-condense sort of climate system closed up in there, whose only energy input is from your burner beneath the pot, and only energy output is heat lost through the walls, and by changing your one input you're driving that whole enclosed system to a different equilibrium pressure.

The Instant Pot is in that family. It only comes with a single weight sitting on the vent tube. It has no visible pressure gauge, but an internal sensor, and the firmware modulates the heating input to hold a target pressure.

Beyond that, they build in a lot of features to make it more foolproof. There's a 'vent' button that mechanically pushes up the weight to let the pressure off so you can get your meal out faster than waiting for natural cooling, and you can move the button without your hand being near the weight where the steam will escape. The weight is under a plastic cover with a ring of holes not directly above it, so escaping steam has to take a longer path under this cover, and a lot of condensation happens in there, so if your hand does get in the path, it packs a lot less latent heat of vaporization to deliver to your skin. There's a pair of mechanical interlocks so (a) when pressure is inside you can't rotate the lid to try to open it, and (b) any rotation of the lid also lifts the weight. Inside the lid, the vent tube has not just one opening but a set of cut channels, and there is a screen over it, all to reduce the chance that one random bean blob blocks the whole vent and leads to overpressure. Plus the microcontroller will detect any excess pressure at the sensor and turn off the heat and display an error.

Overall they did a lot to make it convenient and non-scary.

Pressed the yogurt button out of curiosity last night. Darned if it didn't make yogurt.

Now I have a lot of yogurt.

 

The wife got a Ninja Foodi from Costco yesterday .

The dehydrating feature is the first up to try.

I'll post up some results when they are available .

 

Is the "Clear Packing Tape" to cover your mouth so you don't have to drink this abomination?

 

To make a poor-man's 'aerator' on top of the bottle you'll use for the ~ month of fermentation after the two days in the Instant Pot.

I haven't tried it, but the recipe author reported decent opinions from a couple people who did.

I only have the one pot, and it's currently occupied making something like my old chili recipe minus the bits I don't have at the moment. So no wine for me. I found a cache of seriously old dried beans.

 

Here's the first dish out:



Steak wasn't the best cut, but still turned out well.

And easy cleanup.

 

That looks really good.

I bet it was very tasty.

Hang in there and keep the cuisine pics coming.

 

Kraft macaroni and cheese, two boxes, with a tin of minced clams, extra white cheddar, and a dollop of sour cream.

Bob Wilson

 

From the Cardiologist's Cookbook